Fox Not Chopping Babylon A.D. for U.S.

Production addresses rumors of drastically shortened runtime.

The Babylon A.D. production blog has officially refuted the rumor that the US will receive a drastically shorter version of the film than European audiences.

The rumored full run time, supposedly leaked during a press conference by either the film’s director Matthiew Kassovitz, or the film’s female star Michelle Yeoh, indicated the film would be a meaty 160 minutes. When Twitchfilm.net later reported the film would come out in a 90 minute version for the eager (and now even hungrier) U.S., rumors also sprang suggestions that the film would be neutered for censorship purposes.

Not that this science fiction blockbuster (adapted from Maurice Georges Dantec’s Babylon Babies) need be overtly racy or fantastically violent but director Kassovitz ( La Haine, Crimson Rivers) seems less than likely to produce a pic befitting a soft PG-13, thus making rumors the film’s bending to censorial limitations a bit hard to digest.

Over at the Babylon A.D. production blog, the runtime rumors have been officially laid to rest:

“The approximate length of the film is 1h40min and this is what has been delivered to our partner, FOX. So I can reassure you, FOX is not chopping up the film and cutting 70min like I read on Rotten Tomatoes ! :-)”

Last slated for theatrical release February 29th, Babylon A.D. is now rightly positioned in the thick of the summer releases, hitting U.S. theaters August 29.